Patricia Mary St. John (5 April 1919 – 15 August 1993) was a British evangelical writer and missionary. She was one of the most prolific evangelical writers of fiction in the latter part of the 20th century. She worked for much of her life as a missionary nurse in Morocco. During her time as a house mother at Clarendon School for Girls, which was run by her aunt, she wrote Treasures of the Snow and The Tanglewoods' Secret. Her later novels, Star of Light and Secret of the Fourth Candle, were based on her experiences in Tangiers. She lived for some years until her death in Canley, Coventry in 1993.
The third of five children, Patricia was born on 5 April 1919 in Southampton, England, to Harold (Harry) and Ella St. John nee Swain, shortly after her parents' return from South America (Carangola, Brazil) where they had worked as missionaries.
After completing her school education, Patricia trained to become a nurse during World War II. After the war ended she became a house mother at her aunt's boarding school, Clarendon School for Girls, until joining her older brother, Farnham, in Tangiers, Morocco, where he was a missionary doctor after qualifying at the University of Cambridge in 1944. A newspaper interview published in the Coventry Evening Telegraph on 24 October 1978, says that her writings - poetry and children's stories - had already earned her some money, so she financed herself while helping her brother. Although initially working with Farnham in the main foreign hospital in Tangier, she later spent five years working at a village clinic in Xauen, or Chaouen, in a more remote area on the coast of Morocco. Eventually, she returned to Tangiers, spending 27 years working as a missionary nurse overseas.
From her memories of a year lived in Alpine Switzerland she wrote her second book, Treasures of the Snow.
St. John was one of the most prolific British Protestant evangelical writers of fiction in the latter part of the 20th century. Treasures of the Snow (1980-3) and The Tanglewoods' Secret (1980) have been produced as films.
Treasures of the Snow was translated into Afrikaans.
St. John lived her later years in Canley, Coventry, where she worshipped at Canley Evangelical Church and ran children's Bible classes. She died in Canley on 16 August 1993 as a result of heart problems.